What's out there already works plenty well enough, otherwise we wouldn't be using it.

That's one of a number of reasons why Linux will never be for the masses! It's fine for the geek but in the long term it's unusable for the general public. The Linux world needs to take a clue from Apple and start producing stuff "that just works!" because that is not the case for Linux and especially X. And until they can do that, Linux will be just where it is now, on the fringe and mostly for the geek.

I can't tell you how many Linux apps I've used that were 95% usable and great apps but that last 5% never go attended to and that last 5% is what made the app unusable in the long term. It's very frustrating and the main reason I use Macs exclusively at home. They just work!

It shares the same basic design as the windowing systems of Mac OS X and Windows Vista (and, for that matter, the original Windows NT windowing system). It's the only design that makes any sense on a modern operating system, so any potential replacement would share the same design as X.

The problem with replacing X outright is backward compatibility. Any replacement would have to support absolutely everything that X can do - drivers, input devices, networking, 3D acceleration, and so on. That's a huge amount of work right there.

In addition, it would have to support all existing Linux applications. In practice, that means it would have to be able to accept connections from X11 clients. That's even more work - X is kind of tricky to implement properly, and a modern X server can still run applications from the '80s.

Once you'd done all that (give it a decade or so), you'll have basically re-implemented X.

It would be far simpler to fix the implementation problems with the existing X server. This is being done. It's just taking a while.

It shares the same basic design as the windowing systems of Mac OS X and Windows Vista (and, for that matter, the original Windows NT windowing system). It's the only design that makes any sense on a modern operating system, so any potential replacement would share the same design as X.

The problem with replacing X outright is backward compatibility. Any replacement would have to support absolutely everything that X can do - drivers, input devices, networking, 3D acceleration, and so on. That's a huge amount of work right there.

In addition, it would have to support all existing Linux applications. In practice, that means it would have to be able to accept connections from X11 clients. That's even more work - X is kind of tricky to implement properly, and a modern X server can still run applications from the '80s.

Once you'd done all that (give it a decade or so), you'll have basically re-implemented X.

It would be far simpler to fix the implementation problems with the existing X server. This is being done. It's just taking a while.

Except that G has indicated that the development for this Linux will be web based so the only Linux app that is native is the browser (chrome on chrome)(with some minor exceptions). There is no need (intention?) of supporting every other Linux application in fact I gather that they will support almost no other Linux application besides Chrome.

If G was going to make a fully compatible Linux distro they would not have qualified their development system as being web based. The idea is to not require anything on the local machine except the browser. They could adapt the Android GUI for this very easy.

If they are going to make a complete Linux distro... Whats the point? Everybody and their brother already has a distro to call their own. Too many cooks writing the menus and not enough cooks making the food!